Earlier this morning, Netflix finally announced that they have renewed Stranger Things for a second season. They accompanied the announcement with a Stranger Things season 2 teaser trailer to get you in the mood, while providing cyptic clues as to what to expect in the upcoming nine episodes. And now The Duffer Brothers have revealed new details about Stranger Things season 2. Hit the jump to learn the details.

Okay, so we already know that Stranger Things season 2 will be coming in 2017 with nine episodes, compared to eight for the first season. Matt and Ross Duffer will return as writers and executive producers. Shawn Levy and Dan Cohen are also back as executive producers. The teaser trailer also features nine titles, presumably the titles of the upcoming nine episodes:

Madmax, The Boy Who Came Back To Life, The Pumpkin Patch, The Palace, The Storm, The Pollywog, The Secret Cabin, The Brain, and The Lost Brother.

What do they mean? The Duffer Brothers did an interview with EW revealing new details about the upcoming season, here is what we learned:

The Setting

The original story took place in November, 1983, and the teaser trailer revealed that the second season will not jump in time too much — it will be set in 1984. The Duffer Brothers reveal that while they never considered handling the second season as an anthology (like Fargo or American Horror Story) they did talk about “a larger time jump where the kids are older now and it’s a different decade.” But they came to the conclusion that “there’s still more story here [in the 1980s], there’s still things that are unresolved.”

The story will “venture a little bit outside of Hawkins,” and even the opening scene of the season two premiere won’t take place in the fictional small Indiana town seen in the first film. This makes me wonder where the upcoming season will possibly go. Perhaps the US Department of Energy laboratory front is just a small satellite office for this government agency. Things are bound to get bigger.

The Upside Down

But don’t worry, the story will return to Hawkins and the Upside Down. Ross Duffer teases:

“We obviously have this gate to another dimension, which is still very much open in the town of Hawkins. And a lot of questions there in terms of, if the Monster is dead, was it a singular monster? What else could be out there? We really don’t go in there much until they go in to find Will at the end. So we’ve opened up this doorway, and to us it’s exciting to talk about, like, what else is behind there? There’s a lot more mystery there to be solved.”

The Characters

As for who will return for the second season story, I think we can expect the main characters to be involved, including Mike (Finn Wolfhard), Joyce (Winona Ryder), Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo), Hopper (David Harbour). And they are keeping mum on Millie Bobby Brown‘s Eleven (“We leave that up in the air.”) I would bet $100 she is a big part of the next nine episodes.

In addition to the main ensemble cast, four new characters will be introduced. Matt Duffer teases that “There’s going to be a lot of new and interesting dynamics that we didn’t see in season 1.”

Making A Sequel

The brothers have spoken about sequels in the past, and now they say they are trying to take inspiration from James Cameron as “one of the reasons his sequels are as successful as they are is he makes them feel very different without losing what we loved about the original.” So expect some inspiration from Aliens and Terminator 2: Judgement Day. But as Corey Atad illustrates, not many television shows with a great first season followed-up with a better second season. The sophomore slump is more prevalent in television than it is in movies. I’m hopeful that the Duffer Brothers have a plan, but I’m cautiously optimistic.